HOUSE GOP AGREES TO VOTE ON 3-MONTH DEBT LIMIT INCREASE

Boehner: Goal to force passage of budget

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. 
House Republicans backed away from their resolute position on the federal debt ceiling, announcing Friday that they will move next week to boost the government’s borrowing authority for three months.

The move is a retreat from the earlier insistence among some Republicans that any such debt increase would have to be matched by spending cuts of equal or greater size.

A vote on the proposal is expected Wednesday. If successful, the measure would postpone what was expected to be a major clash with the White House over government spending.

The new strategy, crafted at a three-day retreat in Williamsburg, Va., that ended Friday, is one sign that Republicans are looking for new ways to litigate their differences with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats over spending and deficits.

Under the bill, Republicans will seek to raise the debt limit to allow government borrowing through mid-April — long enough, they say, to give both chambers time to pass a budget for the next fiscal year. If either chamber failed to adopt a budget by April 15, that chamber’s members would then have their congressional pay withheld.

As laid out to fellow Republicans in a speech at the retreat, House Speaker John Boehner said the goal would be to force Senate Democrats to pass a budget, something they have failed to do for more than three years. With a budget in place, he told them that Republicans would require that a longer-term increase in the debt ceiling be tied to significant spending cuts.

“We are going to pursue strategies that will obligate the Senate to finally join the House in confronting the government’s spending problem,” he said, according to excerpts from his speech that were released Friday.

As for docking the Senate’s pay if it does not adopt a budget, he said, “The principle is simple: No budget, no pay,” Boehner said.

The GOP’s new path is an attempt to acknowledge the reality that Republicans control only the House while preserving a tactical advantage that could force long-term reductions in spending, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told reporters on Thursday.

An administration official said the White House viewed the move as a major concession by House Republicans.

Though Obama has in the past insisted on increases of sufficient length to calm financial markets and remove any doubt about the ability of the U.S. government to pay its bills, the official said the president would accept a “clean” short-term extension that did not include cuts.

“We are encouraged that there are signs that congressional Republicans may back off their insistence on holding our economy hostage to extract drastic cuts in Medicare, education and programs middle-class families depend on,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “Congress must pay its bills and pass a clean debt limit increase without further delay.”

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Senate would “be happy to consider” an increase in the debt ceiling that arrives without conditions. He did not address, however, how the Senate would treat the House’s proposal to tie member pay to the passage of a budget.

Some leading House Democrats reacted more negatively than the White House, asserting that a short-term extension would inject new uncertainty into the economy and indicated that tying congressional pay to the production of a budget would violate their belief Congress should increase the debt ceiling without strings.

“We need a clean debt ceiling increase and a bipartisan and balanced budget that protects Medicare and Social Security, invests in the future, and responsibly reduces the deficit,” said Drew Hammill, spokesman for Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a statement issued Friday. “This is a gimmick unworthy of the challenges we face and the national debate we should be having.”

The Treasury Department has said Congress must raise the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling by the end of February or early March, or the United States would not be able to meet its obligations to its creditors.

Besides removing the immediate threat, a short-term debt ceiling increase would shift the debate to areas where Republicans believe they have more leverage.

Those include automatic spending cuts set to hit the military and domestic programs in early March, as well as the expiration of a funding mechanism keeping the government running at the end of that month.

Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which represents a bloc of the House’s most conservative members, issued a joint statement with three former chairmen of the group endorsing the idea of a short-term increase in the ceiling.

“The American people expect Washington to pass a budget and live by it,” they said.

The move provides policy benefits for House Republicans as well. If House leaders succeed in forcing the Senate into negotiations over a budget resolution, they could theoretically reap a host of related policy benefits, including fast-track privileges for cuts to health and retirement programs and an overhaul of the tax code that lowers rates — the GOP’s top policy goal.

The fast-track procedure, known as “reconciliation,” protects deficit-reduction measures from filibuster in the Senate. It can only be created as part of a budget resolution.